


Loneliness

by just_another_classic



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 15:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14404815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_classic/pseuds/just_another_classic
Summary: His daughter is four months, three weeks, and two days old. He makes note of the days that pass in a small journal, keeping tracking of time, her cries, and any new developments. He’s not sure why he does it, except perhaps that it makes him feel as if he’s talking to someone, anyone not the babe.





	Loneliness

His daughter is four months, three weeks, and two days old. He makes note of the days that pass in a small journal, keeping tracking of time, her cries, and any new developments. He’s not sure why he does it, except perhaps that it makes him feel as if he’s talking to someone, anyone not the babe. 

He hasn’t had the opportunity to leave the tower much. Alice requires near constant attention, and even when sleep claims her, Killian is half-afraid that if he leaves, the terrible magic that keeps his daughter trapped might somehow prevent him from returning. Beyond the curse that’s placed on his daughter’s blood, a different sort of magic inhabits the dwelling. Food, fresh food, sits in the cabinets. No rum, of course, but there’s bread and fish and vegetables, milk and water. Whatever he might need. It’s a part of the curse, of course. He supposes that whomever created this prison didn’t want their captive to die of starvation. No, death might be too easy of an escape. But, he’s thankful for it, terrified and unsure as he is to leave Alice. 

But he’d be lying if he claimed that he didn’t miss the companionship of others. He’s rarely ever been alone in his life. There were his parents, and when he no longer had them, he still had Liam. And when Liam -- when Liam died, he had his crew, and you don’t spend weeks out at sea without building some sort of camaraderie. Then there was Milah, and then there wasn’t, but even in Neverland he wasn’t alone. So it’s an adjustment to this solitary life in the tower. 

Well, not entirely solitary. There’s Alice, but she doesn’t speak. He speaks to her, regales her with tales of pirates and mermaids. He tells of her of Milah, leaving out the fact that if Milah had lived, she never would have existed. (He doesn’t dwell on the fact that a life with the woman he loved and one with the child he loves now are somehow incompatible. Milah never wanted more children.) Killian sings to his daughter, songs that he remembers from his youth or ones that he makes up on the spot, silly things that she doesn’t understand but occasionally merits a laugh. 

(She laughs now, and that sound is the best of music.)

What Alice lacks in speaking, she makes up for in crying and squeals. She’s not a silent thing, and he’s hasn’t been around enough babes to know if this is normal or not. The few times he’s been able to gather his courage and leave the tower, he’s hurried back. He asks a question here and there about babes, what to expect, but the conversations are nothing more brief interactions between exchanges of coin and goods. What he does know is that she cries often and loudly. It drives him mad. He wants to soothe her. He wants quiet. He wants for it to not be like this.

There are fleeting moments when he resents his daughter’s existence, when the confinement and her cries become too much. There are times when he wonders if this is punishment for all the lives he’s ruined. Him, trapped in this stone prison with a child that --

\--that he loves. 

That’s something he’s unable to deny. He loves her, is shocked at how much he cares for this small person. He never thought it was possible to love to this magnitude. And yet he still occasionally thinks those shameful things, and he wonders if that makes him a monster, if all the blackness in his heart has somehow consumed him and warped him into the hollow shell of a man that occasionally resents his own child’s existence. 

He wonders if this is what his father felt, if this is what compelled him to sail off into uncharted waters, abandoning both he and Liam. But Killian is not his father, he refuses to be. He won’t abandon Alice to sate his own selfish desires. He’s not that man, vowed to never be that man the moment he gifted away his captaincy of the Jolly to Mr. Smee and turned his back on everything that drove him for centuries. 

And he knows that she’s worth it. She didn’t ask for this life any more than he did, and until he finds a way to break this wretched curse, his daughter will be more of a prisoner than he. Killian has the ability to leave, should he choose to ( _ he won’t _ ), but his Alice cannot, trapped the way she is, punished for a crime she did not commit. 

He understands the loneliness of this tower, how suffocating its stone walls feel even on the best of days. That’s not something he can protect her from, and the impossibility of it way weighs heavily; but damn it, he’ll try, do his best to ensure she has a happy life, that she’ll at least have him.

Even if that means he’ll only have her. 


End file.
